8 courses with the subject HRTS UN, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
Evolution of the theory and content of human rights; the ideology and impact of human rights movements; national and international human rights law and institutions; their application with attention to universality within states, including the U.S. and internationally
This course will introduce students to the international law of human rights, and give a basic orientation to fundamental issues and controversies. The course has two principal focal points: first, the nuts and bolts of how international law functions in the field of human rights, and second, the value and limitations of legal approaches to a variety of human rights issues. Throughout the course, both theoretical and practical questions will be addressed, including who bears legal duties and who can assert legal claims, how these duties might be enforced, and accountability and remedy for violations. Attention will be given to how international law is made, what sorts of assumptions underlie various legal mechanisms, and how the law works in a variety of contexts
In this course students will work in an applied setting to learn about issues that impact asylum seekers with disabilities in a real-world context in cooperation with asylum lawyers from the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP). In essence, IRAP will be our “client” and our class projects and assignments will take the form of research projects that produce materials that will be of assistance to immigration lawyers representing asylum seekers with disabilities. In collaboration with IRAP, we will produce reports addressing the challenges faced by asylum seekers with disabilities from Central America. Specifically, students will work in teams to research country conditions issues relating to the challenges faced by people with impairments and disabilities in Central America and in Mexico. Through a series of individual and team assignments students will prepare a report and presentation to be submitted to IRAP at the end of the semester
In a renewed age of anti-immigrant fervor, the last few years have seen attention focused on people seeking asylum – the process under international law by which people fleeing persecution can seek protection in a country not of their citizenship. New York has become a particular flashpoint with a large influx of asylum seekers, most of them from Latin America. Often, they have arrived on buses sent here by southern governors intending to make the border “problem” that of a so-called “sanctuary city.” How has New York responded? And how does this fit into the city’s long history of refuge? This course will offer students an introduction to the theory, ethics, and history of the idea of international protection. We will look specifically at how Latin American citizens have engaged with the US asylum system over time and how this engagement has changed the shape of US immigration laws. We will study the origins of the ideas of international protection, who is understood to qualify and why, how the system has changed over time, and what these developments mean for a broader understanding of human rights across borders. We will also take a critical look at asylum, examine ideas of deservingness and innocence and their intersection with categories of race, class and gender, and question what it means for certain people to be constructed as victims and others to be seen as not eligible – or worthy – of protection. This is an engaged pedagogy course. The class will be organized around a close collaboration with a NY legal organization that has taken on the work of representing many asylum seekers in the city. Students will learn the complexities of US asylum law and will work collectively to use this knowledge, while developing their research skills, to put together reports to be used in active asylum cases
This seminar and engaged pedagogy course is centered around close collaboration with a community-based organization in New York City. We will divide our time between an intellectual study of the history, theory, and practice of human rights protections, and address the semester's specific topic as it is unfolding locally and nationally, in real time. As an engaged pedagogy course, the academic and project-based work will be conducted in conjunction with, and for the benefit of, an organization involved in local social justice work. The course is therefore fundamentally designed around the lives, experiences, and needs of real people in New York City and the organizations dedicated to advancing their demands. Our partner organizations serve the needs of their members or clients in various ways, including but not limited to: legal representation, public policy advocacy, rights' campaigns, and educational outreach. Students will work directly with members and/or clients of these organizations as they draw upon human rights frameworks to make specific demands to ameliorate their circumstances. Ultimately, students will use their academic knowledge, reading and writing skills, and newly-gained on-site experience to complete a specific project intended to further the causes and needs of the community-based organization and its members
This course provides students with an introduction to the history of human rights as a compelling, contested, and dynamic constellation of discourses, structures, and practices. As a framework for articulating and pursuing justice at local, national, and global levels, human rights in the 21st century draw on the diverse histories of social movements, moral philosophy, legal institutions, and political maneuvers across the modern period. Claimed most frequently when their violation is most egregious, the history of human rights is also a history of wrongs, with the changing nature and scope of oppression serving to provoke different kinds of human rights struggles. Often invoked as timeless and universal standards, the history of human rights demonstrates their basic malleability, both in terms of which rights are recognized and who qualifies as human, and their fundamental contingency, both in terms of the precariousness of any human rights ‘victory’ and their potential for co-optation in the interests of power. Finally, while this course is primarily concerned with the history of human rights, we will also consider the human rights of history, reflecting on the role of history and historical consciousness in the pursuit for justice. Learning Outcomes Aligned with the critical, historical, and integrative grounding of the course, the objectives for student learning encompass areas of knowledge, skills, and values. They include: Students will analyze the change over time of human rights discourses, institutions, practices. Students will analyze the continuities and discontinuities between historic and contemporary forms of human rights. Students will develop knowledge and understanding of various strategies for promoting human rights deployed by historic actors. Students will develop knowledge and understanding of the role of history and historical consciousness in contemporary efforts to secure human rights. Students will develop their capacity for empathy across difference. Students will orient their own values in relation to the dynamic principles of human rights
Given that, according to the UNHCR, there are currently 108.4 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, over 35 million of whom are refugees, it is unsurprising that their predicament preoccupies international lawyers, academics from the social sciences to the humanities, engineers and economists, journalists, policy specialists at NGOs, government officials, artists, tech companies, philanthropists, and, most significantly, displaced persons themselves. This seminar asks how these different actors draw on specific discourses and arguments—technological, scientific, personal, moral, historical—as they construct the figure and the problem of ‘the refugee.’ We will recognize refugee crises as an issue of urgent public concern as well as an occasion for interrogating how such crises are represented across academic, legal, and cultural conversations. Does displacement caused by personal persecution, natural disasters and climate change, armed conflict, or economic deprivation invite different kinds of international attention or sympathy? Where does the sanctuary promised the citizen end and the hospitality owed the stranger begin? How do contemporary developments in climate science, social media technologies, and big data intersect with discourses on refugees? And if ‘the refugee’ tells the lie to the nation state’s capacity to account for the world’s people, what other forms of political and social organization does the refugee live, inspire, create, or warn against? To consider such questions, we will examine political theory, history, anthropology, and philosophy; analyze international legal documents, policy proposals, investigative journalism, and NGO reports; and engage with novels, poetry, film, and photography, among other materials
This course provides students with an introduction to the study of genocide. In this class, we will take a critical approach to understanding genocide, meaning: we will try to avoid easy moralizing and distancing of genocide; we won’t take existing legal and political definitions of genocide for granted; and we will think about power in relation to genocide perpetration and prevention. Our strategy will be interdisciplinary, meaning: we will explore the ways historians, psychologist, lawyers, political scientists, and others have tried to understand genocide; and we will reflect on the limits on what and how we can know about genocide as a human experience. This course aspires to be practical and applied, meaning this course fundamentally anti-genocidal in its purpose, and students will have the opportunity to contribute to and/or develop practical efforts commemorate, advocate against, or prevent the perpetration of genocide
Source: Barnard College's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
